A new law just signed by Governor Jerry Brown requires California public schools to teach the Filipino American contribution to the farm labor movement.
Some schools may want to refer to the new book Little Manila is in the Heart by Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, an associate professor of history at San Francisco State University.
Mabalon recently sat down for an interview with the Sacramento Bee.
She said the first Filipinos landed on Morro Bay on October 18, 1857.
Filipinos “built the Central Valley with their bare hands in asparagus, tomatoes, celery, peaches, tomatoes and grapes,” Mabalon said. “Filipino and Mexican immigrants and their families turned California into the seventh-largest economy in the world.
LATEST STORIES
“California farmers were desperate for Filipinos because Chinese, Punjab Sikhs and Japanese laborers had been outlawed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other draconian acts of Congress and President Teddy Roosevelt.”
Stockton, California’s Filipino community established 40 businesses in Little Manila around 1924. You can read about how it grew and how it was eventually destroyed for a freeway in the Sacramento Bee.
